


The Last First Kiss

by callmefairyofthesea



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Asexual Pidge | Katie Holt, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Gay Keith (Voltron), Getting Together, Lance is a disaster around Keith but he'll get it together, M/M, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Past Allura/Lance (Voltron), it's fine, look it's all platonic but the characters are kissing left and right, the five times Lance kissed his friends and the one time it was Keith situation, this was a silly thing I wrote because Lance is a flirty bisexual charmer and I relate, you know what it might actually be seven times because I tried to use all the characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27995532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmefairyofthesea/pseuds/callmefairyofthesea
Summary: The five times Lance kisses his friends and the one time it was Keith. They'll eventually get the timing right.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 124





	The Last First Kiss

Traditions

“Right-o,” says Coran as he puts a hand to his mouth. “It would seem my lip is bleeding.” He tilts the knife responsible away from his face, fascinated as a bead of blood slides down it and onto Hunk’s pristine kitchen counter.

Hunk doesn’t turn around, just readjusts his apron and plants his hands on the counter, dark knuckles paling on white tile. And oh, great, now he’s hyperventilating, and Lance half-rises from the sofa on the other side of the apartment, knowing he’s got to get Coran out of the kitchen before anyone faints.

“Don’t care you’re in med school and think it’s cool,” Lance snaps, teetering on one leg. “Blood’s not allowed in our kitchen. Not since the incident of ’08.” He spares a glance toward Hunk, whose eyes are closed and whose arms are clenched. Lance feels a stab of anger in his chest at Coran, which isn’t fair, it’s not, but he and Hunk go way back, and he’s tired of being the blood police.

“How’d you cut your lip on a knife?” Pidge asks from the stepstool in front of the liquor cabinet. They have a two-liter bottle of sparkling grape juice under one arm and three wine glasses in the other, and their left hand stretches futilely for the vodka, just out of reach. Lance would laugh at them—make a joke about how they used to tower over him when they were kids—if he weren’t so focused on Coran.

“Band-Aids—” Coran starts to say.

Hunk’s eyelids flicker shut as he inhales deeply. “Out of the kitchen, please.”

“No, seriously,” says Pidge, twisting on their step stool to get a better look at all the blood. “How’d you—?”

“The fuck, Pidge?” Lance wheels on them, betrayed. “You’ve known Hunk as long I have—”

“Out!” shouts Hunk, his enormous forearms trembling, and Lance and Pidge fall silent. Coran half-stumbles out of the kitchen, blood dripping across the cheap linoleum floors.

“I forgot,” Pidge mutters.

“My bad, my bad!” wheezes Coran, hovering at the edge of the living room’s carpet.

Lance just huffs, feeling like he narrowly avoided running for the puke pot, and sinks back down on the sofa, the ten-dollar steal that he and Hunk found at the flea market last year, nestled to the left of Allura and Pidge’s brother Matt. Pink bows and blue ponytails stream off his cushion, and Allura impatiently tugs at his hands, her bright eyes flashing.

“ _Lance_.”

“I’m back, I’m back. Geez. French braid?”

“Fishtail,” she demands, but Lance is three years over their three-month relationship and elbows her for bossing him.

“Princess. Oh, and Coran, Band-Aids are in the upper left cabinet in the bathroom. Neosporin’s in the drawer.” He swats her hand away and grabs the fine-toothed comb. “Now quit it. If I’m braiding your hair, you’re sitting still.”

“Thank you!” Coran sucks his lower lip into his mouth as he trails past the living room “Scuse me, Number Four. Wounded soldier coming through.”

And number four means Keith, because Coran likes to order the group by height, and Lance looks up before he can stop himself. Keith sprawls out on the floor with the new puppy. Long black hair pulled back into a tufted ponytail, and is that a new shirt? Lance manages to ignore Cosmo trying to bite the laces of Coran’s leather dress shoes. He fails to ignore Keith rolling onto his belly and pulling him back. “Sorry, we’re working on it.”

“Not a problem at all. When I was your age—”

“You mean seven years ago,” Lance butts in against his better judgment as he looks down Coran’s six-foot frame, old-man slacks and sweater vest completely wasting his youth. But Keith is talking, and he’s never been able to resist needling himself into those conversations. “You’re like, twenty-nine.”

“OUT, PLEASE!” Hunk has his head in the sink, and Lance feels a pang of guilt as the room waves Coran toward the bathroom.

“Go, go!”

He disappears down the hallway, closing the door behind him.

“What a legend,” Pidge cackles from their stool, and the two-liter of grape juice tumbles to the floor with a loud bang. “Oh, fuck.” They scramble down the stepstool and slide the vodka and glasses onto the nearest counter.

“ _Careful,_ Pidge. The floor stains, and our landlord is already on us for the window.”

“Sorry.”

Where’d you even find Coran?” Lance asks Allura next, forcibly turning away from Keith. “Glad you introduced us and everything. He’s cool. But weird as fuck.”

“He was a TA for us back when we were in undergrad,” Matt answers, elbowing Allura. “And collab’ed with her dad on a few papers.”

A discordant note in the room resonates at the mention of Alfor, Allura looking away and down, fingers pulling at a ponytail, and the silence suffocates—should Lance say something?—but then Pidge snorts.

“Ahh, _connections_. Well, I like him.” They wander over with the dented two-liter and lean against the arm of the sofa, flicking Matt’s arm aside. The room exhales together. “Hey, Lance, think he’ll let you kiss it better?”

Lance shrugs as he splits Allura’s enormous hair into two sections, fingers skillfully twisting out a starting braid. He tries to not think about spring semester freshman year. Reminds himself that they’ve moved past it. “He better. It’s practically tradition at this point.”

“What’s tradition?” Keith asks, looking confused.

“Oh yes,” says Allura, a little too brightly. “I guess you missed our last two dinners. Last week Shiro nicked his thumb helping Hunk in the kitchen—”

“Where is Shiro anyway?” Matt interrupts, looking up from the book in his lap for the first time. “Keith, where’s your asshole neighbor?”

“I don’t know, Matt, where’s your asshole best friend?”

“On a date with Adam,” Allura interrupts. “It’s their six year anniversary.”

“Stop moving your head so damn much.”

“Lance—”

Pidge cuts in with a cracked grin. “Lance does it for his family.”

“Because I do! You _have_ to kiss it better.” He stands by this at twenty-two, and he’ll stand by it when he’s eighty.

Allura just laughs, her head tilting back and making him swear as her thick white curls start unraveling. “And then when I got a paper cut on Monday, Lance kissed it better.”

“Because it’s _tradition_.” Lance huffs and lets go of the braid, and several of the bobby pins go flying as the fishtail unwinds. He sticks one of the pink bows in his own short curls. “Also, screw you and your hair.”

“I take offense to that.”

Keith’s eyebrows rise toward his hairline. “Okay?”

“It’s a thing some parents do with their kids,” Hunk calls from the kitchen. “If there’s an ouchie, you kiss it, and it makes it better.”

“But it doesn’t,” Keith insists, looking frazzled.

Lance looks at him again, under the pretense of glaring. “Of course it does!”

Keith’s lips part, like he’s about to snap back—it’s Lance’s favorite part of being his friend—but then Coran comes back into the living room and walks straight toward him, and the moment is gone.

“Lance!” Leaning over the coffee table, Coran offers his bandaged lip and thick beard and mustache, and Lance grins at all that ginger. “I believe this is tradition.”

Hunk bursts out laughing from the kitchen, making a mess of the cocktails he was mixing, and Keith ducks out of the way with Cosmo as Lance surges forward, chastely kissing the edge of Coran’s lip, right on top of the glittery Band-aid.

“All better,” he pronounces to the room. Because fuck it, Coran deserves someone kissing his boo-boos better.

“God,” says Pidge, still giggling, as Hunk places three mixed drinks in front of Lance, Allura, and Matt and a glass of grape juice in front of them. “Lance, you’re so weird.”

“You’re next.”

The Bet

“ _If_ ,” says Lance into the couch cushions, voice muffled against that favorite yard sale sofa, “ _if_ you can get me to pass this astrophysics final . . .” He groans, digging his head deeper into the crack between the cushions. “UGGHHH.”

“Didn’t catch that, buddy.”

Sighing, Lance pulls himself slightly out of the pit. He needs to sleep, but there’s enough caffeine in his system that it’s not happening at this point. And it hasn’t happened in over a week because he can’t remember the last time he went back to his apartment and slept in his own bed. Just knows the last few days have been a haze of group study sessions and waking up with his notes glued to his cheek. “If I pass, I’m gonna kiss you.”

Two snorts emanate from the kitchen table and a cough echoes from his left, which he ignores.

“You’re gonna kiss me?” Hunk asks, voice pitched up in amusement.

“Like, the biggest, most thank-you kiss ever. In the middle of graduation, with everyone watching.” His head is fuzzy with math, hard to think, but he likes the idea, clinging to it like it’s coffee.

Laughing, Hunk readjusts their textbooks, the ones sliding off the sofa pillows and hovering dangerously close to the food crumbles all over their white carpet. He gently nudges Lance’s arm with his knee. “Reminder: The Garrison already offered you a job. No big pressure.”

“Except,” says Lance, his voice filling the room as his head finally pops out of the cushions, hair mussed in twenty different directions, “it is. They could change their minds. I could just, you know, not get my degree. I mean, what if I fail this final? And then I don’t graduate. And _then_ —”

“Nope.” Hunk’s thick arm wraps around Lance’s shoulders and squeezes him into a side hug. “Stopping you there. We still have two hours of studying tonight. Plenty of time.”

“Sure,” Lance grumbles, leaning into Hunk’s side. He appreciates the gesture, but that doesn’t mean he feels better. He swats his foot at Pidge, cross-legged on the floor and leaned up against Hunk’s leg. “If it wasn’t for this asshole who’s gonna wreck the grade curve.”

“Probably,” agrees Pidge, deftly dodging his kick. “But that’s why I’m helping you study, dumbass.” They twist to smile crookedly at him, all teeth and squinty eyes behind their enormous, horn-rimmed glasses.

“Mph.”

Silence settles for a moment as they scribble in their notes, a few quiet murmurs as Pidge corrects Lance’s work. Three years younger than him and twice as smart—but it’s nice. Having a friend who’s patient enough for his ADHD brain and skipped so many grades that they’ve been study buddies since Lance turned eight. While they scribble over his formula, Lance tries to steal a glance at Keith and Adam, sitting on top of the kitchen table with paint tubes and brushes, canvases on their laps. Lance and Hunk found that table for ten bucks at the same yard sale as the sofa, and he’s sort of worried Keith’s perfect gym body is going to finally break it.

“Do you guys even study?” he whines in their direction.

A wave of satisfaction surges through him when Keith looks up through the fringe of his hair.

“Fuck off,” says Keith in his tired, familiar way. “Some of us have final projects.”

“And I,” Adam adds, tapping his Wacom tablet, “am just here for the free study snacks.” He throws his head back, tosses a popcorn kernel, and smoothly catches it with his teeth. “Tada.”

“Loser,” snorts Keith.

“Jerk.”

“Asshole.”

Lance makes an annoyed sound in the back of this throat and slides his fingers through his twisted hair. Taps his pencil on the rings of his notebook.

“Focus, dude.” Hunk’s foot presses on his. He didn’t even realize it was bouncing. He’s not used to all-nighters, and the fuzziness of 2am is starting to dull his sense. Maybe some more coffee—but no, the pot is empty on the table next to Keith. Stupid Keith. In theory, he could make another pot, but if he can pull through another fifteen, Hunk will probably cave and make it, and Lance _really_ wants Hunk’s coffee.

“You know,” says Pidge after an agonizing ten minutes of pencils scratching on paper, “why is Hunk the only one who gets a kiss? Seems a little unfair to the group effort.” They toss a crumpled-up piece of scratch paper at Keith, who startles and catches it mid-air. “Right, Keith?”

Keith glares over at them, a paintbrush in his mouth and a palate knife sticking out from behind his ear. “Wha—?”

“Ex _cuse_ me,” Lance interrupts, ears red, refusing to admit to himself that Keith’s catch was hot, “but Keith’s not helping me study, Adam’s been out of school for, like, four years, and you’re actively wrecking the grade curve. Hunk, my man, my dude, my bro, is the only one worthy of these lips.”

Keith’s face flushes as Hunk laughs, and Pidge’s glasses tilt in Lance’s direction. They muss their sandy-colored hair. “Fair.”

“Shiro says you’re just talk,” Adam drawls, setting aside his tablet as he spins the stylus between his fingers. “That you never actually follow through on flirting.”

“Adam, my love, my darling, I _always_ follow through on flirting.” Lance refuses to believe that Shiro would blaspheme him like this.

“Twenty bucks.”

Pidge’s and Keith’s heads shoot up.

“Keep talking.” The notebook is carefully set on the floor, the textbooks flipped shut. He’s been looking for a distraction for hours now, and he’s happy to let Adam be it.

“Twenty bucks you won’t do it.” Adam leans back on the table, arms crossed.

Keith slams his paintbrush down with a groan. “Seriously, guys?”

“That I won’t pass, or that I won’t kiss Hunk?”

“Kiss Hunk,” says Adam with a slow curl of his lips. “Obviously.”

A challenge. A beat as everyone looks at Lance, heads moving in synchronicity.

“Obviously,” he agrees, the corners of his mouth twitching.

A third beat of silence. Pidge’s eyes go back down to their notes, pencil scratching across Lance’s work. Hunk coughs into his hand once, barely holding down his laughter, while Keith raises an eyebrow at Lance, edging him on. And Lance can’t resist.

“Deal.”

As Pidge looks up, eyebrows furrowed, Lance crawls across the couch and into Hunk’s lap, legs flailing as he wraps his hands around Hunk’s neck. He’s kissed Hunk before, when the group’s played Kiss Shots, but never like this. Decides to check in. “Hunk? My bro, my man, my love?”

“Oh, come on!” Adam whines, “I’m short on rent!”

“Fine.” Hunk’s dark eyes roll, but he leans into Lance in a fluid motion, kisses him soundly, chapped lips and vanilla chapstick, and then promptly shoves him off his lap. “You’re welcome.”

Pidge’s shoulders shake silently, and Keith snickers, and Lance falls backwards, unwinding his arms and legs, thudding to ground as he splays on his back. “Hell yeah!” he crows, making brief eye contact with Keith. His entire face flushes red, so he decides to look at Adam instead. “I believe you owe me twenty bucks.”

“Fuck,” says Adam with a slight wrinkle of his nose. He has his head slanted to one side, as if he’s rapidly re-sorting previous assessments of Lance. “Didn’t think you’d do it.”

"Have you met him?” Pidge asks. They lean back on their wrists and flick their ankles back and forth. “What’d you expect?”

“Talk,” says Adam defensively. “He flirts with literally every girl I’ve seen him with.”

“Not every girl.” Lance, sitting up, folds his legs together. Glances at Keith. “Sometimes they’re guys.”

“What?” Adam drops his stylus.

“Yeah?” Lance frowns. There’s a flicker of realization as he looks at him, paint-splattered shirt and thick-framed glasses, remembering that they’ve only known each other four or five weeks now, when he moved in with Shiro after years of long distance. “I’m bi?”

“Oh!” Adam wrings his hands in the air dramatically, nearly knocking over the empty popcorn bowl. “Oh!” He looks at Keith, arms still waving, like he’s waiting for him to say something. “And you—?”

“He flirts with everyone.” Keith eyeballs him darkly. “Don’t you, Lance?”

“We met like a month ago!” Lance bursts out. “And no one asked you, _Keith_.” Because if Lance didn’t even know he was flirting, it shouldn’t count. Because Keith should keep those stories to _himself_.

“Ohmygod, I’m _sorry_ ,” Adam shrieks back, hands in the air again.

Hunk laughs as they continue to bicker, pulling his posture straight on the sofa with a soft creak, and stretches his arms over his head, biceps flexed. Leaning back into the cushions, he nudges Lance’s leg with his foot and grins. “Oh, yeah, too bad Adam wasn’t here during our freshman year. Your bisexual awakening, guest starring TA Shiro.”

Not even Pidge’s raucous laughter can cover Adam sputtering and Lance shaking his head, arms raised defensively.

“It wasn’t like that—”

“—flirted with my _boyfriend?_ ”

“—was dating Allura—”

“—my _boyfriend?_ ”

“—not like he turned me gay—”

“—and he never _told_ me—”

“—just hadn’t come out yet.”

Pidge raises their hand solemnly and interrupts them. “Adam made this bet on faulty knowledge. I vote he doesn’t pay up.” Their tongue sticks out aggressively, then slinks back in to laugh at Lance’s red face and Keith’s frown.

But Lance tackles them with a pillow, desperate to change the subject, and suddenly cushions are flying, and Lance knows that the studying is over, but he aces the final Monday morning, bleary-eyed and high on coffee, leftover pillow down still in his hair.

He still kisses Hunk in the middle of graduation with everyone watching.

Adam slides him twenty bucks.

Confessions

“So Shiro, huh,” says Pidge nonchalantly from their side of the yard sale couch, cocooned in three blankets, glasses reflecting the TV. Their fingers fly over the video game controller in a blur, and suddenly Lance’s character goes flying off the edge of the course.

“What about Shiro?” He feigns confusion as he tries to recover, his heartbeat picking up. A quick combo and a grin when Pidge swears under their breath. “Yeah, fuck you, I’m good at this game.” He aggressively smashes the buttons, pulling out a digital rifle, and Pidge’s character ducks out of view.

“Fuck you too,” they snort. Their finger briefly hovers over the pause button, but they snuggle deeper into the blankets, hands still moving impossibly fast over the controller. “No, I just can’t believe you were into _Shiro_. He’s like, thirty.”

“Twenty-six,” Lance laughs, his heart constricting slightly in embarrassment. “It was a freshman thing. Hot TA, you know? Then I met Kei—yoot. Cute people.”

_Shit._

Pidge wheels on him, eyes bright, and the screen is immediately forgotten. “Wait, wait, wait. Did you say Keith? Like Keith _Kogane_? Like our friend?” Their characters idle.

“God.” Lance wishes he could hide his face, but there is no escape from Pidge’s analytical stare. He can see the cogs turning in their head, sliding together all the puzzle pieces of his convoluted friendship with Keith.

“Oh my god, you’re into Keith.”

“I…”

“Our _friend_ Keith.”

“It was dumb,” Lance snaps. “Right after your family introduced us to Shiro—and then he introduced me to Keith. It was just—it’s dumb.”

“It was dumb?” Pidge repeats skeptically. They do a double-take.

He attempts a half-assed smirk. “Didn’t mention it because it was pretty short-lived. Allura and I started dating right after.” He ignores the painful tug of his chest. “Your character is about to die.”

“Shit.” Buttons click as Pidge pushes his character back to the edge of the stage and guts him with an electric knife. For a moment, there is only the sound of the background game music. “…Did you ever kiss?”

“The fuck?” Lance’s character falls off the edge and loses a life. His head swivels to Pidge while he waits for his avatar to regenerate. “No. It was pretty damn one-sided, Pidge.” A lie. His voice is tight. His fingers tense over the controller, and then his character is back, and he slams his meanest combo. Their character dies. Lance would feel bad, except he doesn’t.

Pidge keeps their mouth closed for a few minutes, and Lance would thank them if he weren’t so busy crushing their character. He thanks the universe that Hunk is out of the apartment today, at some physicist conference or something. His character dies again. Great. He’s thinking about Keith, and he doesn’t mind thinking about Keith, except in the context of thinking about kissing him. Nope. He continues punching commands into his controller. Pretends Pidge didn’t ask. Waits it out.

Eventually, he hears a quiet murmur from Pidge’s side of the couch. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Lance says, and maybe it’s because Pidge won’t ever ask again, or because he really _should_ talk about it, and he doesn’t want to, but the words are falling out of his mouth before he can stop them. “It was a long time ago. He asked me out the same day we met. You know, before I came out to anyone.”

Pidge continues tapping on the controller, and the apartment air feels strangely thick, like there is a weight sitting on both of them, making it harder to talk. “Ah.”

“Hunk just meant that I started questioning, you know, my sexuality. Around then.”

Pidge doesn’t ask any more questions.

If this was Hunk, he would keep talking. Say something about all those years trying to bury the half of him that wasn’t straight, because he thought he had a choice in the matter. Not realizing he was drowning himself, pretending to be something he wasn’t. But it’s Pidge, and so he doesn’t say anything else. They’ve never asked him about his crushes before.

“Why?” he asks finally, after they’ve traded off four wins.

Pidge chokes the next combo, and Lance shoots their character off the stage. Three notes of game music jangle from the screen, and then they pause it, slowly looking over at Lance with an eye roll. “It’s dumb.”

Lance’s fingers twitch on the controller, anxious to retrieve the special item in the bottom right corner, but the game is still frozen, and Pidge is still watching him, and Lance’s temper fizzles. “No it’s not.” He sets the controller down, turning to face them, tucking his feet into cross-legged fashion. “What’s up?”

Pidge sighs and slumps into the couch, away from him, head turning upwards to stare at the ceiling. Their glasses reflect the fluorescent light bulbs that Hunk bought last week. “So I’ve never kissed anyone, right? Not like you have.” Frowning, Lance opens his mouth, because it’s really not that many people, but Pidge’s eyes dart toward him fast enough that he stops himself. “And most of the time I don’t think I want to.”

Lance chews on his lip while his fingers twiddle with the loose string of his socks. This is unfamiliar territory for them, and he’s unsure of the boundaries. “Okay.”

“But sometimes… I don’t know.” Pushing their glasses up, Pidge rubs their eyes. “Sometimes I think it would be nice to just do it the once, you know? Just. Just to confirm it to myself.”

“Okay.” His brain shoots forward in twenty different directions, trying to fill in the holes of this conversation, but Pidge curls deeper into the blankets.

“It’s dumb.”

“It’s not dumb,” he says automatically. “But, you know, just to confirm what _exactly_ isn’t dumb…” He lets it hang between them, waits for them to actually say it.

“Asexuality?” Pidge’s voice cracks, and they grimace, crossing their arms and closing their eyes, head flopping back on the sofa.

“You're ace?” Lance’s twenty different brain paths short circuit to one as he leans back onto his wrists and tilts his head to one side in consideration.

Pidge half-shrugs, half-nods. “Maybe?” They sigh. “And I thought I’d get it by college, you know? Thought maybe I was too young, or a late bloomer, or whatever. But I’m nineteen and still haven’t…”Another long exhale. “I still haven’t gotten it.”

Lance nods, even though they’re not looking at him. Even though he can’t see their eyes. He can hear the tension in Pidge’s voice, the way it gets caught in their throat like they’ve never told anyone. “Okay. So. You don’t need to kiss anyone, or sleep with anyone. You can just be ace.”

Grunting, Pidge’s eyes flick sideways, eyeing him with frustration. “Sure. And that works for some people. But …” They purse their lips and sit up a little straighter, adjusting their oversized flannel and rolled-up jeans, pushing off the three layers of blankets. “It’s a spectrum, obviously. And sometimes I wish I knew a little better where I fall on it.”

“Right.”

Pidge toys with a spot on their glasses; Lance watches the video game screen because he doesn’t know where else to look. Their characters are frozen halfway through an impressive kick and shield, and the expressions are kind of priceless.

“I don’t suppose you…” Pidge stops themselves and grimaces. “It would be nice to get my first kiss from a friend. So it’s not awkward.” They look at him a little too long, but Lance is still processing. “So I could do it on my own terms.”

He doesn’t respond immediately because his brain is putting the information together. The quiet confession, the timing, the meaningful look they shoot at him, eyes on his lips just briefly, and he abruptly bolts upright, mouth falling open.

“Oh!” he says. “Oh, I mean, yeah. I can be your first kiss if you want.” He feels a little warm in the face, knowing that they would trust him with this. But he’s been told he’s a nice kisser, and Pidge deserves the best.

“Yeah?” Their face lights up in a way that makes the awkwardness of the conversation evaporate, and Lance feels his lips tugging sideways into a grin, excitement building in his chest.

“Yeah, of course! I don’t mind.”

“And you won’t make it weird?”

“Hey, if you don’t want these lips…” He laughs and grins at them, to let them know he’s joking, that they don’t have to do anything, but Pidge crawls over to his side of the couch and looks at him very seriously.

“Lance.”

“Of course not,” he amends. “Whatever you need.”

Pidge nods cursorily. “If you slobber on me, I’ll punch you.”

His instinctive laugh is cut off by Pidge’s soft mouth on his, and he lets them linger for a second, assessing. Moves his lips slowly, two soft pecks, and then a deeper kiss as he tilts his head sideways to get the angle right. It’s a pretty good kiss, all things considered, but Pidge makes a weird sound in the back of their throat and brusquely pulls away.

“Uh,” they say, a look of deep concentration on their face.

Lance’s chest flutters with panic. “That bad?”

Grabbing the game controller so they can fiddle with buttons, Pidge shakes their head. “You’re fine. It was…it was okay.”

“Okay.”

“Like coffee,” Pidge elaborates, fingers dancing.

“Coffee?” That’s a new one. He’s gotten all sorts of compliments, from the few times he’s wanted to make out a club, and coffee is not one of them.

Pidge snorts. “I just mean…if someone gives me coffee, I don’t mind drinking it. To be polite, you know? But I never drink it on my own. It’s just…not my thing.”

“Oh. Did it help?”

Pidge considers this as they hit the pause and un-pause button several times in rapid succession. “Yeah, I think so. Thanks, Lance.”

“No problem.” And then the game is un-paused again, and he sends several laser blasts at their character with his rifle. Six or eight matches later, and he’s still thinking about Keith, and trust, so he clicks pause just long enough to look over at Pidge.

“What?”

“I guess, since you asked, and we’re being open with each other, or whatever.” He lets himself feel the tightness in his chest for a second, how fast his heart is pounding. “Yeah. I’m kind of into Keith.”

They grin at him in that way that makes their eyes go tight and their teeth go big.

“And you can’t tell _anyone_ ,” he adds hastily. Because he knows what Pidge is like with secrets, and he can’t afford to mess this up again, not with Keith.

Pidge mimes locking their mouth with a key and throwing it away.

They play for another two hours.

Lance’s chest is still tight when Hunk gets home, heart throbbing so hard it hurts, but yeah, it feels good to finally admit it.

The Engagement

Shiro and Adam are barely holding each other upright, beer stains down their button-ups and hair matted back with sweat, and Lance can’t remember ever seeing them this drunk. Their newly ringed fingers keep catching the light, throwing sparkles over the walls, and the dance floor is slick, the disco lights too bright. Lance thinks he can see Allura and Hunk swaying in the distance. Knows Pidge is hiding out in the bathroom trying to call Matt, who took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up at the wrong club.

He laughs at the ceiling, glow sticks encircled up both arms, and turns to grin at Keith, whose feet are kicked up on their friends’ empty chairs. Lance just knows they haven’t been alone in weeks, and Pidge left their table with a smirk, and he kind of wants to do something about it.

“Wanna dance?” he asks, fingering an empty shot glass. The table is full of them.

“What?” Keith’s eyebrows turn downwards, their usual position.

“WANNA DANCE?” Lance is freshly graduated, high on life, drunk on cocktails. And Keith looks good, black jeans and cropped leather jacket, and Lance _feels_ good. Wants to sway with him on the dance floor, wants to talk in his ear because the music is too loud, wants to wrap his hands in his hair and _kiss_ him because he’s been waiting too damn long.

Keith’s eyes dart toward Allura, though, and he shrugs. Lance doesn’t know what that look means, but he stumbles to his feet and grabs Keith’s wrist and gently pulls. “Please?” He’s not here to second-guess himself.

Maybe Keith’s eyes soften for just a second, dilated in the dark, and then he pulls Lance by the wrist, fingers cold, stumbling to the club floor without a word. The music is fast tonight, electric guitar beats running wild, and Lance is good at this, knows how to move in time with the music, swinging hips and spins. He whirls around Keith, eyes sparkling, but Keith’s feet aren’t moving, his head awkwardly bobbing, and Lance won’t have it. Grabs Keith’s hand from his pocket and twirls him, and Keith is maybe a little out of step, but his eyes are smiling. And Lance, just maybe, doesn’t let go of his hand.

“I didn’t know you could dance,” Lance shouts, pulling just short of Keith’s ear, the disco lights flaring red and blue behind them.

“Shut up.” But Keith is grinning, and then twirling, and Lance’s loses his self-control to Keith’s back pressing up against his chest, and there’s sharp cologne, sweat, black hair, vodka. Instinctively drops his hands to Keith’s waist, guiding them into the music pulses. Stops breathing, maybe, in the middle of all the colors. Scared to gasp against Keith’s neck.

Just knows the music’s changed, a low beat with a badass drum line, and Keith is rolling against him, and Lance’s hands are tighter on those hips, and _yes_ , there.

Intoxicated on alcohol fumes and hot air and spinning disco lights, and he’s not thinking about tomorrow or next week. Not caring that this is a dangerous game to play, that he has to see Keith tomorrow, and next week, and hopefully forever because damn this boy is going to be the death of him.

“Thank you, Shiro,” except he whispers it into the thick strands of Keith’s hair, because he _needed_ this, this engagement party at a gay club, and maybe Keith feels Lance murmuring against his neck because he twists and moves, and now Lance is the one in front, Keith’s soft hands smoothing down his hips, thumbs just barely grazing his ass. He inhales sharply and tries to keep dancing, tries to ignore Keith’s breath on the side of his throat, the ghost of Keith’s lips by his ear.

No regrets.

Keith’s fingers dip under his shirt, cold as fuck, and then disappear back to his hips, and Lance wonders if this is what death feels like. Pointy chin digging into his shoulder, broad chest against his back. He wants to turn around, catch Keith’s breath with his lips, to kiss him until they’re both gasping. He starts to twist in Keith’s arms, starts to swivel his hips to face him…

And Keith’s eyes are dark, half-lidded, his lips just barely parted, and Lance tilts his head, and he can _feel_ them inhale together, their noses just barely brushing and someone barrels into them, and Lance is knocked sideways, away from Keith. He gasps, arms flailing, and knocks into several legs and heels as he barely manages to catch himself. The floor is vibrating from the music, the lights spinning fast, and Lance feels like he just jumped in a lake. Feels cold and clammy. Feels like maybe he almost made a huge mistake. He pushes himself back to his feet, scanning the crowd of writhing bodies for Keith. Not sure what he wants, just knows he needs to find him. Black jeans, red jacket. Black jeans, red jacket.

Black jeans. What the hell is he thinking? Red jacket. He can’t _do_ this to them again.

And then he spots Keith, bobbing in the distance, elbowing at the dancers that are trying to pull him closer, and Lance feels a surge of red hot anger in his chest. He takes a step toward the throng—

“Party game!” Hunk roars behind him, and Lance jumps so hard he nearly slips on the slick floor. Hunk’s thick arms hold onto him, though, and pull him back toward the side tables, where Shiro and Adam are drunkenly giggling at their engagement rings.

“We gotta get Keith!” Lance shouts into the fray, pulling at Hunk’s arms because Keith isn’t made for clubs, quiet and snarky and introverted, and Lance feels like it’s his fault.

“No prob.” Switching directions, Hunk pushes them through a dozen people, the alcohol cloud and green lights, and grabs a dazed Keith by the waist, shoving the dancers aside, and oh thank god, Lance can breathe again.

He’s slammed down into a seat next to Adam and is met with the red grinning faces of Allura and Pidge, and Matt’s here now, setting down three pints of beer.

“Matt!”

“You made it!”

Lance is still dizzy from the memory of Keith behind him, breath dancing on his neck. He half-thinks he imagined it. That he zoned out at the table and fantasized Keith’s smiling eyes and cold hands running circles over his body.

“Kiss shots!” Matt bellows, downing a shot as he swivels one of the empty beer bottles on the table, and the table roars when it lands on Lance, but Lance is already grinning, because he likes this game, their stupid-ass drunk game from freshmen year when Allura told him she’d never played spin-the-bottle. Distracts him from Keith’s body somewhere to his left, staring. Matt guffaws and stumbles over to him, teeth glinting because this boy doesn’t know how to stop smiling.

“Buy me a drink first,” says Lance disapprovingly, but Matt’s hands slap themselves down on either side of his head and pull him close enough for a close-mouthed kiss. He smells like cheap beer and cherries, and Lance starts giggling as he pretends to swoon and collapses on his lap, making them both fall to the ground. Hunk slides him a shot and, per the rules of the game, Lance immediately downs it, then pushes the beer bottle toward Allura.

“Kiss shots!” she laughs, her cheeks bright pink. Her dark skin glitters under the disco lights as she flicks the beer bottle. The table holds its breath as it swings around and points to Hunk. Roaring screams, Hunk flushing.

“KISS SHOT!” Adam and Shiro cheer.

Allura kisses Hunk with one fist knotted in the collar of his shirt, and so it goes. Intoxicated kisses and drunken stumbling as the table switches seats in a never-ending game of musical chairs. Lance’s eyes keep settling on Keith, who refuses to spin, but maybe the lights are too bright for him to notice.

Pidge is the one who finally pushes the beer bottle into Lance’s hands, vodka halfway down their gullet, and Lance is praying to whatever’s listening that it lands on Keith, and the bottle keeps spinning and spinning, catching and throwing all the disco lights, and then it skids to a stop on Shiro, who is Asian-flushed and laughing.

“HAPPY ENGAGEMENT!” Lance hears himself say as he’s thrown into Shiro’s lap, arms intuitively going around his neck. Adam’s laughter is too loud in his ears as Shiro grabs the back of his neck and mashes their lips together. It’s open-mouthed and tastes like tequila, and Lance’s head feels a little dizzy as Shiro pulls away to down his shot. But then Adam swoops in to catch his fiancé’s lips, and Shiro’s shirt is unbuttoned before Lance even makes it back to his side of the table, half-gasping for breath.

Pidge and Hunk push another beer into his hands, and Lance giggles at all the glow sticks on his arms, and Keith is staring at him again, so maybe he didn’t imagine it.

“KISS SHOTS!” he shouts at Keith, who flushes and smiles.

Pidge drags Lance up to the bar to grab water for the table, but the night disappears in swallows of alcohol, and Lance sort of remembers the taxi ride home but not really. Just knows that he collapses against Keith’s shoulder and kind of falls asleep and that Keith’s voice in his ear, telling him that they’re at his apartment, is enough to make him drunk all over again.

Closure

“Oh, god.” Lance stumbles toward the apartment door in just his jeans and one sock, hair askew, brain pounding. “Please stop knocking.” He stands for a moment in front of the door, smacking his lips because how is his throat this _dry_. Another knock. Lance eyeballs Hunk’s bedroom door, wonders how he’s still sleeping, and swings the door open.

“ _What?_ ”

Allura’s hand is poised in midair, about to knock again. Her hair is knotted back into a bun, but Lance can see the glitter in it from last night. And he recognizes her hangover T-shirt and leggings. Sunglasses on her nose and ear buds dangling. “Hi.”

“Couldn’t you have just _texted_?” he whines, opening the door a little wider. “God, Allura, it’s”—he checks his watch—“seven in the morning.” Fuck, he hasn’t even been sleeping two hours.

Allura grimaces at the sound of his voice, pressing her hands to her ears. “Sorry. But I have class today, and we pre-gamed at your apartment, and my phone…” She gestures toward his kitchen, and Lance immediately sees it sitting next to the bananas.

“Oh,” he says, the antagonism dropping from his voice. “Wanna come in?”

“Coffee?” she asks.

Lance nods and shuffles toward the Keurig that he and Hunk splurged on. Starts it. Gets out cream and sugar for Allura, because even if they kind of sucked together, he still knows how she likes her hangover coffee.

Allura drops onto the couch by the door and monopolizes it, arms and legs draped over the entire thing. Sunglasses knocked askew, glitter spilling out of her hair, eye bags from hell, and she still looks better than him.

“Jealous?” she asks, seeing him staring.

“I want to be pretty when I’m hung-over,” says Lance with a headshake. “So not fair.”

She smiles at him in that familiar way he doesn’t get very often these days, and his heart thuds a little at the memories. Late night parties and coffee mornings, the two of them tangled up on Lance’s dorm couch. He smiles down at the Keurig. It’d be a shame to forget how her hair looked in the morning.

“Bad one today?” he asks after he slides her a steaming mug. She sits up blearily and sips at it, tucking in her feet so Lance can have the other half of the couch.

“You have no idea,” she tells him. “Four classes _and_ three study participants in my lab.”

He doesn’t envy her lab schedule. Or her grad program. Or that she has to go in on a Saturday. Lance could never.

“And that’s why I’m a pilot,” he tells her smartly. She smacks his knee. “Ow.”

“Shut up and let me drink my coffee,” she says in her princess voice, the one that makes Lance clam up and do whatever she wants. He decides to sip quietly on his straight-up black coffee, listening to Hunk’s gentle snores from one room over.

His watch ticks softly in the background as they sober up together, Lance yawning and Allura rubbing her under-eye bags. They don’t talk, but it’s peaceful. Nice, in a way. Having company for his body’s alcohol cleanse. When her cup is empty, she slides over on the couch and rests her chin on Lance’s shoulder.

“Thanks.”

“Your chin is pointy,” he tells her.

She digs it in harder. “So?”

“So I almost kissed Keith last night.” Not how he wanted to tell her, but he’s been replaying that dance on the club floor in his mind for the last five minutes.

Allura’s head immediately rears back as she blinks. “You what?”

“At the club. I was going to kiss him. But we got interrupted.”

Allura’s mouth opens once, twice, and closes. She bites her lip and taps her fingers on the coffee table. “You kissed Shiro,” she reminds him, as if he could forget that sloppy excuse for a kiss. “And Matt. Are you sure—?”

Lance shakes his head, cutting her off. “Before that. On the dance floor. I almost. Oh. Oh man—oh _shit_.”

Allura’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder reassuringly. “Lance. Hey, talk to me. I thought you were over Keith. After—”

Lance presses his face into his hands. “Yeah, no, I remember.” Freshman year. When Lance chose Allura. For the awful three months _that_ was. “I thought…I don’t know. I really screwed things up, and, like, we’re just getting on good terms again. I like being his friend. I don’t—I don’t wanna—”

Allura’s hand moves down to his fingers and squeezes. “You’re not going to screw it up.”

“Oh, like how that worked for us?” Lance snaps, remembering. Spring semester funeral, black dresses and suits, Allura begging him to give her space, refusing to say goodbye before that long flight back to England. The late night calls that she let go straight to voicemail.

“You didn’t ruin us,” she murmurs. “We just…weren’t right for each other. We needed time to accept that.”

Lance swallows, heart pounding. Then, “You ever miss us?” He’s sort of afraid to know the answer. That she doesn’t. That he wasn’t enough. That she regrets him and late-night cuddles and hallway kisses and crying into his shoulder when she missed home. Dinner with his family, their knees pressed together under the dining room table, his thumb rubbing circles on the back of her hand.

“Of course I do.” Her hand falls into his like an old memory, their fingers twining together. “We made some good memories.”

“And some really bad ones,” Lance admits with a small laugh, remembering how it felt when she didn’t come back in the fall. “It sucks we exploded like that at the end.”

Allura hums in the back of her throat. “I miss him a lot.”

Lance knocks her knee with his. “I know.”

“I just wish,” she says hesitantly, “that we had a good ending, you know? That we hadn’t wasted all those months hurting each other after everything.”

He knows. Can still feel the silence that squeezed his throat like a noose. Too angry to talk, too tired to try.

Lance sighs and holds her hand tighter. “Me too.” He thinks about saying something else, about how much it hurt when he saw her by the science building after months of radio silence, but those memories are a long time ago. Mostly healed.

Allura’s hand tenses in his slightly, then moves. He lets it go, surprised when it rests on his cheek. “I’m sorry,” she tells him, big blue eyes earnestly gazing into his.

“I know.” He smiles weakly. “I am too.”

Their eyes lock together. Lance isn’t sure what exactly they’re sharing in that moment, but it feels right somehow. Like an end to something that’s been hurting for far too long.

“Can I kiss you?”

He barely manages a nod, and Allura’s warm lips press against his once, twice, three times, lingering. Her mouth is so familiar to him, the way it curls and parts and gasps for air. He can taste the coffee on her breath. She doesn’t pull back all at once. Lets her forehead rest against his for a second.

“There,” she says softly, exhaling into the air they share. “A proper ending.”

“You saying goodbye?” he jokes.

“Never,” she promises, squeezing his hand one last time. And then she pulls back, standing smoothly and bringing her empty mug to the kitchen. Grabs her phone. “I have to go to class, but thank you for the coffee. And the talk.”

“Welcome.”

A warm smile spreads her lips wide. “See? You didn’t screw _us_ up.”

Lance watches her fondly as she opens the apartment door, sunglasses on and ear buds dangling, and for the first time in awhile, he doesn’t feel a pang of regret when she leaves.

Fair

Lance is tipsy. Three beers in, milling around Shiro and Adam’s insanely nice new house, giggling at everything. The mahogany wood floors? He laughs at the way his socks slide across it. The black marble island? He thinks it’s shaped funny. The circle forming in the living room? Hilarious. He decides to investigate.

“Never have I ever been engaged,” says Hunk from the recliner, and Adam and Shiro boo him while taking healthy-sized swigs out of two red solo cups, and maybe some of it splashes the intricate tile work, but it wasn’t Lance’s fault, and it’s not on the carpet, so who cares.

“Coran, have you gone yet?”

“Oh, yes, Coran, you go!”

Lance bumbles across the floor and situates himself right next to Keith. Bumps his knee and stares really hard. Because Keith has been ignoring him for three weeks now, and Lance _hates_ being ignored.

“Hey, mullet.”

Keith’s head is in his cup, though, and Lance has no idea what Coran just said, but he decides to take a chug too. He’s competitive like that. Can’t fall behind. Not when Keith is still ignoring him.

“Hey, Lance!” And this is Pidge, smile twisting sideways as they realize he’s joined in on the fun. “Never have I ever kissed someone for a bet.”

“Oh, come on!” But he obediently drinks, realizing as he does that his beer is room temperature now. Gross. He shares a sympathetic look with Hunk, who’s the only other person to tip back their cup.

“Unfair,” he informs Pidge. “Totally playing dirty.”

Pidge just slants their still full red solo cup at him. “I play to win.”

“Is it possible to win?” Allura asks from the leather loveseat she shares with Coran and Matt, feet tucked neatly beneath her. “I believe I’ve been playing wrong.”

“But there’s no way to lose,” Keith argues, his eyebrows scrunched, shifting on the carpet so that his fingers just barely brush against Lance’s.

“M-my turn!” Lance claps his hands together, face reddening. He ignores Shiro explaining the rules of the game to Keith and Allura, because it’s not cute that he forgets every time. And he’s not still hung up on the fact that Keith hasn’t talked to him since the club. Not hung up on it at all. “Never have I ever lost twenty dollars in a bet.”

Adam boos and downs half his cup.

“Touché,” says Coran, drinking.

Keith and Shiro sip their drinks too, and Lance isn’t thinking about what Keith bet money on. He’s thinking that the carpet is funny and looks like a dinosaur.

“You too?” Hunk raises an eyebrow at Shiro. “I thought you were, like, too pure to bet money.”

“I lost a marathon to Adam.”

" _And_ twenty bucks.”

“Oh my god, who are you?”

Adam prods Shiro with his elbow. “It was years ago. We’d only just met.”

“You were trying to impress him,” Keith snorts, and his fingers just barely brush Lance’s again, and Lance is too tipsy for this. Refuses to play along until Keith _talks_ to him.

Shiro taps his engagement ring fondly. “No regrets.”

Laughter rings in between the hot afternoon sun, Adam miming a kiss across the circle. “Love you.”

Lance delicately puts his hands into his lap and makes brief eye contact with Pidge, whose eyes are bugged out and keep flickering toward Keith. He looks away and makes conversation with Allura, deciding to put the beer down until he stops giggling.

He manages to ignore Keith’s knee knocking against his, more and more aggressively the longer Lance laughs at Allura’s jokes. Lance laughs louder.

“Whose turn is it?” Hunk asks at some point, after they’ve all been sipping on their beers without playing, and Coran reminds him that they’re not playing by the rules, that it’s just for fun.

“I’ve got one,” says Adam suddenly, sitting up straight and turning away from Shiro. “A good one.”

“I think we ran out of good ones an hour ago.”

“No, no, humor him.”

Adam’s glasses glint beneath the warm yellow sunlight streaming through the patio door. He swivels to look over at Keith and Lance and Allura and tips his solo cup at them. “Okay, this should get almost everyone. Never have I ever kissed Lance.”

Lance sputters, and Keith bolts upright as Shiro chokes on a laugh, and god, he wishes he could die on the spot. He realizes, suddenly, how many of his friends he’s kissed, and how that looks.

“Fair enough,” says Shiro, tipping back his beer, followed by Coran, Hunk, Pidge, and Allura. Matt considers for a moment before taking a sip.

“You’ve _all_ kissed Lance?” Keith asks, his cheeks slightly red, though Lance is sure it’s because he’s tipsy. Not because they have a _thing_ , because Keith has been ignoring him for _weeks_.

“Technically,” says Coran.

“You were there,” adds Hunk.

“Sort of,” Shiro and Matt snort.

Pidge gives a shoulder shrug. “Guilty.”

The room looks curious at Pidge’s admission, but Keith is just looking at Lance, who looks down at the ground to avoid eye contact.

“Most of the time it’s because of kiss shots,” Lance offers, not meaning to sound defensive, because he loves his friends, but he doesn’t like the way Keith’s head is tilted, calculating the almost-kiss at the club like it was a fluke. Just Lance being Lance. Not real.

“True,” says Shiro slowly, his dark eyes studying Lance thoughtfully.

“Don’t be embarrassed.” Allura smiles. “You are a wonderful kisser, Lance.”

“You would know,” Pidge mutters under her breath.

Allura blushes, and Lance meets her eyes briefly, remembering the soft kisses in his apartment last week. How familiar her lips were.

Hunk wolf-whistles, and suddenly Keith’s knee isn’t touching his anymore.

Lance feels awkward in the room, like everyone is looking at him, which they’re not, but he starts tapping on his leg. Tosses his mind around for something to talk about.

“Fuck it,” says Adam, standing and crossing the room. He bends down right in front of Lance’s face. “Fair’s fair. And I’m missing out.”

The tension splits, sunlight spilling back in, and Lance is laughing at Shiro’s betrayed face, and Pidge’s chest is heaving on the floor.

Shaking his head, Lance steadies himself with one hand on Adam’s neck and slowly brings their lips together, wondering if Keith is watching. It’s a soft kiss, warm and fizzy with beer—better than Shiro—but then Adam pulls back with a grin, hazel eyes glittering, and pronounces to the room, “Hand me my beer. I’ve kissed Lance.”

Almost everyone laughs, the sound echoing into the hollows of the new house, bouncing off empty walls and hallways. But Keith keeps staring at Lance with searching eyes, and Lance kind of wishes he would be like Adam and ask for it. The other part of him, though, says _not like this_.

The Last First Kiss

Lance tries not to hold his breath as he minces the onion, hands shaking, listening to the sound of Hunk’s footsteps retreating. “ _Now_?” Looks over his shoulder just in time to see Hunk sliding on his sandals in the dark.

“Can’t make it without fresh basil! Be back in a couple hours!” Hunk scoops up the umbrella in the hallway as he passes it.

“Kay.” Even his voice sounds shaky.

“How far away is your grocery story?” Keith asks after the door slams. His voice is too close, and Lance nearly knee-jerk elbows him when he feels warm air on his neck.

“The good one is an hour away. Hunk’s picky like that.” He keeps his eyes on the onion, waiting for Keith to move back. Exhales like a gasp as soon as he does.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” Lance breathes, still mincing, hoping his hands won’t slip and send him to the ER. “Just—the onion’s got me a little choked up.”

“Oh.” They both pause, thunder rumbling in the distance. Keith leans against the island, his face highlighted by a flash of lightning. “It’s been awhile since we hung out, just the two of us.”

Lance tries to smile, and the effort feels like it could kill him. Stupid Pidge, cancelling last minute. Stupid Hunk, forgetting basil. Stupid, stupid, stupid. “Gotta take advantage of it, buddy! Soak up all this Lance!” Nonsense. He’s saying nonsense.

Keith just stares at him, the sharp planes of his face flickering beneath the storm light.

Lance finishes mincing the onion and moves it to one side of the chopping board. Nothing to do until Hunk gets back. He swallows.

Keith clears his throat, and Lance tries not to make it awkward. Tries not to mention that it’s Keith’s fault for avoiding him. He toys with the cutting knife to avoid eye contact.

“So…”

Lance looks up and holds his breath.

“Should we talk, or whatever?” Keith’s dark eyes burn into him, probing for answers that he doesn’t really have.

Lance’s hands are shaking again. He decides to set the knife down. Okay. They’re talking about the night at the club. He can do this. He licks his lips and blusters, “Oh, so you’re done ignoring me now?”

“I wasn’t ignoring you.” Keith steps forward, his mouth quirked up.

“Yes, you were!” And he was, he _totally_ was, and maybe he’s not shaking with awkwardness anymore, but he’s brimming with anger, wondering who the hell Keith thinks he is—

“Don’t remember. Didn’t happen,” Keith chuckles quietly, taking another step. Lance chokes on swallowed air, because he can smell Keith’s cologne. Can see his eyelashes’ shadows on his cheeks.

“Of course you do. Ever since the club…” Lance protests, and there is a sensation of falling suddenly fluttering deep in his gut, warmth swirling into his face. Fizzling anger like old coals, and he could set them blazing, if he wanted to. But he doesn’t.

“Oh, you’re ready to talk about it now?”

Lance’s heart pounds in his throat, so loud he can’t breathe.

“I don’t wanna mess this up,” Keith murmurs. “Took us long enough to get back to being friends…But you kiss a lot of your friends.”

“Not that many—"

“Coran, Hunk, Shiro.” He ticks them off on his fingers. “Adam, Matt…”

“You were there for all of those. They were—it was _friendly_.” The rain almost drowns him out.

“Pidge?”

“Finals week. It was a one-time thing.” Why is his face so hot?

Keith just waits, his face mere inches away from Lance’s, his chest rising and falling between them. The thunder rolls in the distance, the only sound in the empty apartment.

“They’d never kissed anyone before. I offered to help out—but like—don’t tell people? I think it was a confidential thing.”

There’s a nod. Maybe a smile. “Right.”

Lance starts to feel a little defensive at this point, like who is Keith to be grilling him about kissing people? He’s single. It’s been consensual. “Not that it’s any of your business. I can kiss who I want.”

Keith stiffens, pulling back, his face flattening. “Of course you can.”

“I’m single,” Lance adds, the indignation burning through his chest, and he pushes a step forward. Keith takes a step back.

“Are you?” Keith’s voice cracks, and he ducks his head to study the floor. The blue light glistens off his collarbone.

“Of course I’m single, who would I be—?”

“Allura?”

Oh.

This the topic they don’t talk about. Keith looks up, though. His hair is pulled back, his eyes luminescent in the dim lighting.

“I…” Lance could take the easy way out. Dodge the implication. Protest that they _used_ to date. That _of course_ he’s kissed her. “We just—we never got a goodbye kiss, alright? We’re not—we don’t…”

Keith actually looks surprised at this. “You’re not?”

“No!” And it’s in that moment, Keith’s face dancing through shock and relief and barely contained glee, that Lance feels like he’s finally fitting pieces together, seeing how exactly the last few weeks have shaken out.

“I thought—it was because of Alfor. You guys breaking up. I figured…once enough time had passed…”

Lance is actually smiling now that he understands, has a huge grin across his face, not caring that it looks demented, or that he should be sad because someone brought up Alfor. “No! We just. We didn’t work like that.”

Keith looks alarmed now. “That wasn’t the reason you guys split? Shiro said—”

Lance cuts him off. “It didn’t help. Like. It definitely didn’t make it easier. It just sped things up a little. You know, sometimes I think we could’ve been together for years before we realized we were unhappy.”

He looks at Keith now, confused. “You thought we’d get back together?”

Keith just nods helplessly.

And Lance laughs.

“That’s why you you’ve been ignoring me?”

Keith reddens, his hands clenched together. “You were—laughing at all her jokes at Shiro’s.”

“Because we’re _friends_.”

“And you were watching her at the club—”

“— _because she’s a good dancer._ Oh my _god_. I can’t believe you thought I was still in love with _Allura_ —”

“But you picked her.”

Lance sighs and folds one of Keith’s hand inside his own, smoothing out the knotted tendons and old anger. “Yeah. Freshman year. When I still thought I was straight.”

Keith just shakes his head slightly, like the conversation isn’t going the way he expected. “But I asked you out.”

“Yeah,” Lance agrees, knitting his fingers through Keith’s slowly opening fist. “Freshman year. When I thought I was straight.”

“You avoided me for _months_.”

“No. You avoided me and Allura. I barely knew you. You were just—just Pidge’s brother’s best friend’s neighbor.”

“Shiro’s not just my _neighbor_ —”

“You asked me out the same night I was planning to ask out Allura. I didn’t think it was going to be a thing for _years_.”

Keith looks like his heart may have stopped. “Oh.”

“Yeah, _oh_.”

“I’m an idiot.”

“We’re both idiots.” Lance’s hand fits perfectly in Keith’s, slim fingers holding on tight. “But c’mon, dude. I tried to kiss you at the club.”

Keith’s face is sheepish. “You’re flirty with everyone when you’re drunk.”

“Not that flirty. And I wasn’t that drunk.”

The lightning flashes again, and Keith finally notices their linked hands, the scant inches that separate them. He inhales sharply, and Lance can feel their chests brush. He feels hot. Really hot. Like maybe he should take off his shirt hot.

“Okay, then,” growls Keith, and he crashes their lips together, free hand angling Lance’s jaw down and deep into his mouth, their bodies pulling flush together. Lance’s lips are faster than his brain, because he responds enthusiastically, sucking Keith’s bottom lip and tangling his hands in his hair. And there are fireworks going off, because it’s been a long time coming, and he wants his brain to shut down long enough for him to enjoy it.

Keith pulls back before he can.

“This okay?”

Lance’s laugh is a surprised snort. “Um, _yeah_.”

Lance kisses _him_ this time, soft and slow, just long enough for him to think about memorizing the shape of Keith’s mouth, until hands push him back again, and they part with a wet smack.

Lance gasps slightly. “You always gonna be like this?”

Keith smirks. “Maybe. If you like it, you should ask me out.”

“So demanding.”

“I’m free next Thursday.” He trails one hand down Lance’s chest, pressing his thumb deep into the sharp plane of his hip.

“O-okay. Yeah.”

Keith plants a soft kiss on his shoulder and retreats faster than Lance can pull him back, halfway out the door.

“Where—where are you going?”

“Home.”

Lance stares at his back, flabbergasted. “Shouldn’t we _talk_ or something?

Keith pauses before leaving, eyes glittering. “Sure. Next Thursday. Pick you up at seven.” And then, like the _asshole_ he is, leaves the door open behind him.


End file.
